US Air Force LRS-B Bomber Thread - the B-21 Raider

Wednesday at 6:00 AM
Nov 6, 2015

now Game Over: GAO Protest Reveals Cost Was Deciding Factor in B-21 Contest

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and Air Force Defends Decision to Award B-21 Contract Based on Lowest Cost
The Air Force’s top uniformed acquisition leader on Wednesday stood by the service’s B-21 bomber acquisition approach, which a recently-released Government Accountability Office protest decision revealed to be based on cost considerations.

According to the GAO document, which was made public Tuesday, both Northrop Grumman and the Boeing-Lockheed Martin team submitted bids that met the Air Force’s technical requirements, but Northrop’s offering came in at a lower total weighted cost and total estimated cost.

When asked about the source selection during the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s annual defense conference, Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the military deputy of the assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, did not dispute the GAO’s account.

"We set it up to make sure that they could meet the technical requirements, and if they could all meet the technical requirements, then we would look at the cost,” he said. Both systems adequately met the Air Force’s technical requirements, so the service gave the contract to the competitor offering the lowest bid — leading to an October 2015 award to Northrop’s B-21 Raider.

The classified B-21 program remains closely guarded by the Air Force, which has continuously repeated that it is not ready to release details about the bomber contract value or describe the key technologies of the aircraft. The heavily-redacted GAO report also removed all references to costs or specific technological capabilities.

Asked whether the service might have over-prioritized cost rather than capability, Bunch said he was comfortable with the structure of the request for proposals.

“You have to take that [cost] into account to make sure we're wisely using the taxpayer dollars,” said Bunch, who declined to discuss the differences between the Northrop and Boeing-Lockheed proposals. "If we weren't comfortable that technically it could be done, than we would have done something different.”

Bunch also addressed the GAO’s assertion that both competitors believed that their offerings would cost less than the government’s estimates. Like the GAO decision stated, the Air Force in some cases relied on its own cost estimates after finding that the Northrop and Boeing-Lockheed projections were unrealistic, he said.

“What I would say to everybody is, we budgeted to the service cost position. We budgeted to an independent cost estimate. We did not budget to a contract value,” he said.

The source-selection criteria used to choose the winner of the B-21 contract allowed the companies to submit proposals containing “moderate risk,” which the Air Force defined as a technical approach that could “potentially cause disruption of schedule, increased cost or degradation of performance,” the GAO document stated.

The service believes it can manage Northrop’s performance through the bomber contract itself, which includes incentives for controlling cost and performance, especially schedule-driven milestones toward the end of the development program, Bunch said.

“The thing we've informed the company is, you've got the contract, now we need you to execute, and your incentive is tied to your execution,” he said. “That's where we believe we drive the behavior."
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interestingly
STRATCOM: 100 B-21s Will be Sufficient
While Air Force officials have called for a bigger buy of B-21 Raiders, the current planned number of 100 should be enough for US Strategic Command, the command’s chief said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. John Hyten, speaking Tuesday at the Senate Armed Services Committee, said based on requirements in the New START treaty and the need for the bomber’s conventional operational mission, the planned buy of 100 is sufficient from the “top level.” The Air Force has recently finalized a bomber “vector roadmap” detailing its planned need for bombers in the future, a plan that Hyten has not seen. But on current requirements, the 100 number is enough. Air Force officials, including Vice Chief Gen. Stephen Wilson and Air Force Global Strike Command chief Gen. Robin Rand, have said 100 is the minimum number. Rand,
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said service requirements could be more.
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"Although the service has kept details about the program under wraps, it disclosed in March that the Raider had recently wrapped up its preliminary design review."
Appropriators cut $20M from B-21 program in omnibus spending bill
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The Air Force’s secretive B-21 bomber took a hit in the fiscal 2017 omnibus spending bill, with congressional appropriators stripping about $20 million from the program, budget documents show.

Although the service requested $1.358 billion to fund research and development activities related to the B-21 Raider, the omnibus funding bill would only fund $1.338 billion. Budget documents attribute that cut to “forward financing.”

The documents cited only spell out publicly releasable changes between the president’s 2017 request and the omnibus spending bill, which was agreed to Monday by a bipartisan group of appropriators but has not yet been passed by Congress. It does not contain information on classified Pentagon budget items, which likely also includes spending for the bomber.

The omnibus incorporates several provisions meant to give Congress further oversight over the program. First, it calls for the Defense Department’s inspector general to evaluate the program, formerly known as the Long Range Strike Bomber. In addition, it designates the B-21 a “congressional special interest item,” which gives lawmakers more control over “transfer of funds and prior approval reprogramming procedures.”

Northrop Grumman was chosen in 2015 to manufacture the B-21, defeating a Boeing-Lockheed Martin team. The Air Force has not disclosed the total value of the contract, maintaining that the information would give adversaries too much insight into the program. However, the service has projected the B-21 will cost that $550 million per plane.

Although the service has kept details about the program under wraps, it disclosed in March that the Raider had recently wrapped up its preliminary design review.

“It's making great progress, and we’re pleased with the way it’s headed,” Gen. Stephen Wilson, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, told a House panel then.
is as much as we need to know, I guess :)
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
"Although the service has kept details about the program under wraps, it disclosed in March that the Raider had recently wrapped up its preliminary design review."
Appropriators cut $20M from B-21 program in omnibus spending bill
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is as much as we need to know, I guess :)

In my honest opinion, we'd be much better off, buying 200 FB-22's slightly enlarged with the fuel efficient F-135s,,,, you could make the run in at high subsonic speeds and once you delivered your weapons you'd have the option of a "supersonic dash" out of the combat zone in super cruise.

Yes you'd have to marginally enlarge the airframe to carry the weapon? (B-21 will only carry 1??? to the B-2's 2??? really dumb to downsize??

The FB-22 would be able to "fight its way out" rather than being at the mercy of being spotted and attacked visually, they do stand out,,, stealth is wonderful, but they would be extremely vulnerable if someone in a Flanker found you??

Most of the B-21 mission could actually be flown by an unmanned stealthy drone!
 
Apr 4, 2017
interestingly
STRATCOM: 100 B-21s Will be Sufficient

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while
Officials: the ‘Right’ Number of B-21 Stealth Bombers Is 165
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Lawmakers on Thursday said the
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might need to significantly expand the size of the future B-21 Raider stealth bomber fleet — and a general agreed.

The service plans to spend more than $55 billion to acquire a fleet of 100 of the
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as part of the Long Range Strike Bomber, or LRSB, program. The service in 2015 awarded the initial contract to Northrop Grumman Corp. to begin developing the planes that will eventually replace a portion of the
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fleet.

During a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., questioned whether the Air Force should buy more of the bombers, which will be designed in part to fight through surface-to-air missiles and protect coalition aircraft and drones.

“Can you give us the strategic logic that allowed you to arrive at the 100, or at least 100 number?” Gallagher said. Given the increasingly advanced air defense systems
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by such countries as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, he added, “it seems to me the right number of bombers should be north of 160.”

Testifying at the hearing about the Air Force’s
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were Lt. Gen. Arnold W. Bunch, the military deputy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition; Lt Gen. Jerry D. Harris, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements; and Maj Gen Scott A. Vander Hamm, assistant deputy chief of staff for Air Force operations.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., agreed on the need to buy more of the aircraft,
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, as did Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.

“As your witness testimony states, the Air Force remains committed to a fleet size of 100 B-21s, but I have heard numbers from other people we need even more,” Hartzler said.

The program saw a proposed increase in the FY18 budget from $1.3 billion to $2 billion — an increase of $700 million, or 54 percent — as the project ramps up in planning, testing and evaluation and development efforts.

Bunch said the service isn’t “ruling out” the possibility it may need to buy more of the bombers.

“It’s not just 100 to go do missions, it’s 100 to do the training, to do the depot maintenance,” he said. “But we based that looking at our ops plans, analysis-run scenarios, and we came up with a number that we believe [in].”

Bunch added, “We are comfortable that’s a minimum number.”

Scheduled to begin flying missions sometime in the mid-2020s, the B-21 “will be able to do the conventional and nuclear mission once we get it certified,” he said.

Each bomber, made by Northrop Grumman, is
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in 2010 dollars, according to the Pentagon.

Harris, the general in charge of strategic plans, was even more direct on the service’s need for a higher quantity of Raiders.

“We do agree that probably 165 bombers is what we need to have,” he said.

But the generals don’t want to circulate a final number before Pentagon officials have a chance to complete the so-called National Military Strategy review designed to assess future war-fighting needs.

“Our approach to this is, it’s an early decision, we know we’re going to need at least 100, we’ll possibly need more than that,” he said, “but these aren’t inexpensive weapons systems. We don’t want to throw down a number that may change in several months.”
 
May 26, 2017
Apr 4, 2017
while
Officials: the ‘Right’ Number of B-21 Stealth Bombers Is 165
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and now a new article
Air Force: We Want 165 Bombers, Not Just B-21s
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The
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now says it wants a total future bomber fleet to be around 165 aircraft — not just its fleet of B-21 Long Range Strike Bombers.

Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee’s Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee on May 25, Lt. Gen. Jerry D. Harris, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, was asked about increasing the planned quantity of B-21 Raiders — the Air Force’s future stealth bomber set to join the fleet in the mid-2020s.

The service plans to spend more than $55 billion to acquire 100 of the
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as part of the Long Range Strike Bomber, or LRSB, program.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., questioned whether the Air Force should buy more of the bombers, which will be designed in part to fight through surface-to-air missiles and protect coalition aircraft and drones.

“Can you give us the strategic logic that allowed you to arrive at the 100, or at least 100 number?” Gallagher asked during the hearing.

Given the increasingly advanced air defense systems deployed by countries such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, he added, “It seems to me the right number of bombers should be north of 160.”

“And certainly [Lt. Gen. Michael] Moeller agrees and calls for as many as 200 B-21s,” Gallagher noted, referring to an analysis study from the retired Air Force general, also a former deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs.

Harris replied, “We do agree that probably 165 bombers is what we need to have.”

The 165, however, “refers to the total number of bombers, not the number of B-21s,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek later clarified to Military.com.

The back-and-forth conversation between the generals and lawmakers created confusion over what Harris was referring to, Stefanek said.

The Air Force currently has 62
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, 20
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, and 77
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, totaling 159 bombers, she said.

The service in 2015 awarded an initial contract to Northrop Grumman Corp. to begin developing the B-21, which will eventually replace a portion of the
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fleet.

But Stefanek could not say how the numbers would be reapportioned to reach 165 bombers.

The service maintains it wants to procure 100 of the Raiders,
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. The B-21 is
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in 2010 dollars, according to the Pentagon.

“As you know, we are in the process of a National Military Strategy review,” Stefanek said in an email. “Additionally, [Air Force Global Strike Command] is reviewing their bomber force structure.”
 
Jun 6, 2017
May 26, 2017

and now a new article
Air Force: We Want 165 Bombers, Not Just B-21s
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while according to DefenseOne The US Air Force Needs More Bombers Than It’s Asking For
The only problem with the B-21 Raider acquisition strategy is that the minimum purchase should be 164 of the stealthy jets, not 100.

In a future combat zone dominated by advanced 3-D air search radars, directed-energy weapons, electromagnetic railguns, and hypersonic missiles, there is still room — indeed, a strong requirement — for the new B-21 heavy bomber.
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suggests that the United States needs a lot of them, far more than the 100 new bombers
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.

To prosecute a major, sustained long-range strike campaign within an anti-access/area denial environment dominated by China’s
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or Russia’s
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missiles, the Air Force needs to add a minimum of 164 B-21 bombers to the nation’s older but nonetheless relevant B-52 Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. This is because heavy bombers, whose form and function have been honed in hot and cold wars over a century, can perform missions and hit targets that no other platform can. (Find a detailed explanation for this determination in “
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”,
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written with Air Force Lt. Col. James Price and published by the Center for a New American Security.)

The specific design characteristics of the B-21 remain hidden and undiscussed
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and models, but the evolution of heavy bombers points towards certain attributes that most certainly will be present. First, it will be able to fly a long distance. The bomber came into existence in World War I precisely because its larger frame could carry more fuel and hence fly farther to hit critical targets behind enemy lines. The B-21 Raider, when combined with the
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, will have the range to hit targets anywhere in the world. It will also have the ability to carry a heavy load of ordnance. This was another lesson of the Great War, whose aircrews discovered that it took many bombs of ever-increasing size to take out targets. And while the advent
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rendered moot the 1970s-era requirement for the B-1B Lancer to carry 40 tons of bombs — we no longer need to carpet-bomb a location to ensure the destruction of a target — the size of weapons remains relevant. The B-21 will need to be able to carry the
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and most likely will have a total magazine capacity of around 20 tons. Finally, the development of the Joint Strike Fighter as a passive/active sensor integrator also suggests that the B-21 will have a highly capable data-gathering capacity.

The true game-changer with regard to modern bombers is that they will no longer operate in massive formations as in the classic movie “
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.” There is no need. The B-21’s range, combined with its ability to carry a lot of weapons of different types and sizes, will enable it to strike a host of geographically dispersed targets in a single mission. In the past, the United States would have to first deploy a reconnaissance asset to ascertain a target’s location, then vector a bomber to hit it. The B-21 will be able to do both at once.

There are some characteristics of previous bombers that we will not see in the B-21. It will not fly has high (80,000 feet) or as fast (1,700 mph) as the 1960s’
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. We now know through hard-won experience that an aircraft can neither out-climb nor out-race a surface-to-air missile. Rather, the B-21 will take advantage of the most revolutionary characteristic of modern bombers: their ability to disappear. Technicians who tested early flying-wing designs during the 1940s noted that they were very difficult to spot both visually and by early radar. This insight came to maturity during the 1990s with the introduction of the B-2 stealth bomber. Whereas the older B-52 has a radar cross section of 100 square meters, about the size of the side of a barn, the B-2’s RCS is orders of magnitude smaller,
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. This allows the Spirit, and will allow the future B-21, to sit undetected in the middle of the battle space.

This is of crucial importance. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the Air Force made a strategic bet on shorter-ranged aircraft that would operate from bases relatively close to its targets and in fairly permissive environments. Instead, Russia and China have made massive investments in
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intended to keep American aircraft far away from their targets. The B-21, then, will restore the U.S. military’s ability to fly strike missions in heavily defended areas.

The only difficulty with the Air Force’s B-21 acquisition strategy is that service leaders do not plan to buy enough. Perhaps in an effort to allay fears of runaway program costs, Air Force leaders originally announced that they planned to
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of the new bombers. Later, they said the goal
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However, there was no underlying strategic basis given for the number beyond adherence to a budgetary cap.
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of peacetime air-presence missions and wartime campaign plans suggest that the air service requires a minimum of 164 aircraft and possibly a lot more, depending upon how and where they plan to use older bombers in A2/AD environments.

The B-21 Raider, with its range, endurance, weapons capacity, passive sensors and stealth characteristics, represents nearly a century of refined lessons learned and brings balance back to the nation’s air power inventory. It serves to re-establish a credible deterrent threat to keep the peace and regain the strategic initiative for our nation.
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now Goldfein: Bomber Roadmap, Priorities Paper Coming Soon
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The Air Force will in September release a long-awaited new Bomber Roadmap which will focus not just on the B-1B, B-2, B-52, and B-21, but enabling technologies and things such as standoff weapons, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said Wednesday, also promising a new white paper on Air Force priorities.

At a Capitol Hill event sponsored by AFA, Goldfein said Global Strike Command chief Gen. Robin Rand has been in a “very aggressive dialogue with Congress” about USAF’s bomber plans for the last week or so, seeking congressional input and “socializing” the document so there are no surprises when it’s released. “It’s not even just a bomber roadmap,” he said. “It’s a Global Strike roadmap, that includes all these capabilities that come together to allow us to hold these targets at risk” around the world.

Goldfein said it will be increasingly rare to talk about “any particular platform,” since it’s unlikely that any one platform will undertake a solo, unassisted mission from here on out. The new roadmap is likely to discuss the role of the RQ-4 Global Hawk, for example, providing persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance that ties in with whatever mission a B-1B may be performing, he said.

Goldfein told Air Force Magazine that the roadmap “is going to be a combination of old and new,” offering the example of a B-52 loaded with standoff weapons, an RQ-4 and “an RQ-170 that gives me penetrating capability...when I add those three together, what does that actually give me?” In upcoming trade studies determining new acquisition priorities, such will be the discussions, of “how do we build those combinations to give us the most agility in the future.”

All missions will be scrutinized for penetrating vs. standoff, manned or unmanned, conventional or unconventional, he said, and then “more broadly” how USAF capabilities can mesh with those of other services. “What can I do if I combine those things with a soldier on the ground, a JTAC (Joint Tactical Air Controller), surface, subsurface, orbital?”

He said the Air Force’s modernization program is still intact, but the readiness priority will have an effect on “what’ll push outside the FYDP,” or Future Years Defense Plan, and whether some things are “pushed right...or pushed left. And it’s all about, how do I get the most return on investment in the connective tissue.”

A new white paper, Goldfein said, which will carry his signature and that of service Secretary Heather Wilson, lays out “five priorities that will drive” the Air Force “over the remainder of our tenure together.” The “Wilson-Goldfein era” has begun, he joked. Those priorities are to “restore our readiness,” pursue “cost-effective modernization,” innovate for the future, “strengthen how we develop airmen and future leaders, and “strengthen alliances” with partner air forces, Goldfein said.

As the top priority, restoring readiness will put “a laser focus on revitalizing squadrons,” as Goldfein has promised to do during his nearly one year in the job. “Our endstrength is finally on the rise,” he said, and the gains in manpower, focused on “first sergeants and commander support staffs” should help.

Modernization, Goldfein said, must finally leave behind “the industrial-age model of acquisition” and move into the “information age model.” More important than a system’s intrinsic capability will be “how does it connect” to the overall family of systems.

The Air Force is already building new career path models that will emphasize and provide incentives for airmen serving in joint billets and air operations centers, “where the operational art” of airpower “is practiced daily.” Those tours will become “more competitive for promotion.” Moreover, “we’re rebuilding Joint Task Force capacity, beginning with 9th Air Force at Shaw AFB, SC...to assure we have certified JTF offerings to combatant commanders to respond to crises and conflict in the future.”

Finally, alliances are something “we have” and adversaries don’t, Goldfein said, calling these relationships the US’ “greatest strategic and asymmetric advantage.”

Goldfein, asked by a reporter whether the Air Force has a number in mind for how many fighters it should have, said it would be “inappropriate” to state one. While almost two years of work on a new National Military Strategy have nearly closed with a new product, Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Defense Strategic review will scrub it yet again. The NMS has “annexes appropriate to all the military challenges” Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joe Dunford and Mattis have “laid out, in terms of what we call the four-plus-one framework.”

A net assessment exists of “not only where we are, but where our adversaries are,” and the Mattis-driven review will set “what that force needs to look like to most effectively operate.” The Air Force is “invested” in that review, Goldfein said, and “it’s a perfectly-timed exercise to ensure that we come out...knowing exactly what we need to be able to fight and win in the future.”
 
understandably, B-21 cost info to stay secret despite new Air Force leadership
9 hours ago
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Don’t hold your breath waiting for the contract value of the B-21 Raider to be revealed. While the U.S. Air Force’s top general reviews the bomber program every few months to see whether new details can be released, it will be “some time” before the service divulges more cost information, the Air Force undersecretary said Oct. 12.

Out of the Air Force’s top three acquisition priorities, the B-21 Raider is its most secretive, with only a few details disclosed to the public, such as the estimated price per aircraft and a list of the major contractors.

The service has taken a hard line against releasing the value of the development contract awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2015, with officials saying that doing so would give adversaries information that would allow them to extrapolate on the bomber’s design.

But as the service’s No. 2 civilian, Air Force Under Secretary Matt Donovan finds himself in an interesting predicament. Just months ago, as the majority policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, he helped helm committee Chairman John McCain’s arguments in favor of releasing more information on the B-21 Raider, including the contract value.

Now that Donovan is working for the Air Force, part of his job is to support and implement the decisions of Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein and Secretary Heather Wilson.

The irony isn’t lost on Donovan.

“It’s funny because they knew I was the guy that was always pushing on that from the Senate side [to release the B-21 contract information],” he told Defense News in his first-ever interview.

“One of the things that I’ve been able to do is come over here and say: ‘We need to release things as sure as we know that we can.’ And I know that Gen. Goldfein still does a review every couple of months, and the B-21 folks come talk to him and give him an update because he is very responsive to Sen. McCain’s desires to make sure the American people know.”

Even so, Donovan added that ”it will be some time” before Goldfein and Wilson feel comfortable disclosing the contract value, but “if conditions change as we get farther along in the program, I think the chief and the secretary will certainly consider that and release as much as they can.”

Air Force leaders claim that the B-21 program is going swimmingly and has remained on budget and on schedule. Earlier this year, Gen. Stephen Wilson, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, told lawmakers it had recently completed its preliminary design review.

The service plans to buy at least 100 Raiders — although that number could change as a result of the Trump administration’s defense strategy review and the Air Force’s bomber road map — at a price of about $550 million (in 2010 dollars) per copy.

The engineering and manufacturing development phase is being carried out under a separate, cost-plus contract that is estimated to amount to about $21.4 billion.

“The program is on track,” Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, the service’s top uniformed acquisition official, said Tuesday. “What I will say is that we are marching to the acquisition program baseline timelines that we’ve established, and we don’t have anything … that has risen to a red flag.”

Even though it will be up to Goldfein and Wilson to make the final call on what B-21 information to release and when, Donovan said he will continue to turn a critical eye on the program. In the past two months since he was sworn in as undersecretary, he visited Northrop Grumman facilities to get an update on the Raider’s progress.

And although his main priority is to support Wilson and Goldfein during the budget development process, Donovan also wants to help broker a better relationship between the Air Force and Congress. The service and McCain, R-Ariz., have had a famously contentious relationship over a number of programs such as the B-21 and F-35 — an assessment Donovan said he couldn’t dispute. But it has improved since Goldfein took the chief of staff position.

“The Air Force used to submit their budget and then go tell the Congress what they were going to do. In other words, a fait accompli,” though Goldfein would talk to Senate Armed Services Committee staffers like Donovan about emerging changes to force structure and weapons programs, he said. “Then I would bring him in to see Sen. McCain, and he would have a good discussion with Sen. McCain and get his advice.”

That process is how the Air Force and the committee eventually worked through disagreements about the A-10 Warthog, he said.
 
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